Inkjet printing is a well-established market and process, where images are formed by ejecting droplets of ink in an image-wise manner onto a substrate. Inkjet printers are widely used in home and business environments, and particularly in home environments due to the low cost of the inkjet printers. The inkjet printers generally allow for producing high quality images, ranging from black-and-white text to photographic images, on a ride range of substrates such as standard office paper, transparencies, and photographic paper.
However, despite the low printer costs, the cost of replacement inkjet cartridges can be high, and sometimes higher than the cost of the printer itself. These cartridges must be replaced frequently, and thus replacement costs of the ink cartridges is a primary consumer complaint relating to inkjet printing. Reducing ink cartridge replacement costs would thus be a significant enhancement to inkjet printing users.
In addition, many paper documents are promptly discarded after being read. Although paper is inexpensive, the quantity of discarded paper documents is enormous and the disposal of these discarded paper documents raises significant cost and environmental issues. Accordingly, there is a continuing desire for providing a new medium for containing the desired image, and methods for preparing and using such a medium. In aspects thereof it would be desirable to be reusable, to abate the cost and environmental issues, and desirably also is flexible and paper-like to provide a medium that is customarily acceptable to end-users and easy to use and store.
Although there are available technologies for transient image formation and storage, they generally provide less than desirable results for most applications as a paper substitute. For example, alternative technologies include liquid crystal displays, electrophoretics, and gyricon image media. However, these alternative technologies may not in a number of instances provide a document that has the appearance and feel of traditional paper, while providing the desired reimageability.
Imaging techniques employing photochromic materials, that is materials which undergo reversible or irreversible photoinduced color changes are known, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,948 discloses an imaging method based upon visible light induced changes in a photochromic imaging layer containing a dispersion of at least one photochromic material in an organic film forming binder.
These and other photochromic (or reimageable or electric) papers are desirable because they can provide imaging media that can be reused many times, to transiently store images and documents. For example, applications for photochromic based media include reimageable documents such as, for example, electronic paper documents. Reimageable documents allow information to be kept for as long as the user wants, then the information can be erased or the reimageable document can be re-imaged using an imaging system with different information.
Although the above-described approaches have provided reimageable transient documents, there is a desire for reimageable paper designs that provide longer image life-times, and more desirable paper-like appearance and feel.
A problem associated with transient documents is balancing the demands of image stability to ambient conditions, and ability to quickly erase and reimage the document when desired. For example, while some materials such as alkoxy dithienylethenes show room temperature image stability for weeks and very slow light induced fading under ambient conditions, image erasure in visible light or under thermal heating is slow and occurs at too high a heating temperature. It is possible to reduce the erase time by using bulky substituents, but this kind of structural change may also increase the fading rate at ambient temperature and reduce the archival life of the image. It is important to modify the erase conditions in such a way that faster erase times are achieved while maintaining long (such as more than 3 days) image lifetime. A solution is dual input erase, using simultaneous heating and VIS light exposure of the colored state, as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/762,159, filed Jun. 13, 2007. A dual erase system requires such a design that a heating element is in very close proximity to an erasing light source. Since they can not be in perfect contact, heat energy is lost, reducing the erase efficiency.
Many available visible light sources required for the erase step also have a significant IR light component. This IR radiant energy is converted into heat upon absorption by the substrate. However, with erasable papers in the prior art, much of this IR energy is practically wasted because it is poorly absorbed by the media.
Faster erasing time and more practical erasing conditions are important in order to make reimageable paper documents practical for commercial use. This can be achieved if the IR energy is efficiently captured in order to heat the photochromic material.